Gordon Bitner Hinckley 1910 - 2008

A couple hours ago my mom called me to tell me that President Hinckley has died. So instead of watching Dane Cook's stand-up, i decided going to Ward Prayer (a sort of family prayer with our church), which was nice. We sang "Each Life That Touches Ours for Good" which is a beautiful song, and i was playing, which was nice because i was the best piano player there...that sounds conceited, i only mean that it is a song that wouldn't be nearly as good when played poorly or only one handed, and i'm glad i was able to provide decent two handed playing.

President Hinckley is the first President of the church to die while i was old enough to remember, and is really the only one i've ever known. He's always, even as a 97 year old man, had a great sense of humor, and was a powerful speaker. I can't really compare him to past prophets since he's the only one i've lived through, but he's certainly been the most influential on me, maybe one of the most influential people to live. It's weird to not have him be the President. I'll definitely miss his presence at conference, but it seems like he's been awaiting this for some time, especially since his wife died, so it's really not a sad day. He lived a great life, and now can rest.

"When such a friend from us departs
We hold forever in our hearts
A sweet and hallowed memory,
Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee.

For worthy friends whose lives proclaim
Devotion to the Savior's name,
Who bless our days with peace and love,
We praise thy goodness Lord above."

Please tell me why

Today i saw a commercial for a compilation album of 90's alternative rock. When did i get so old?

I will always stop the Microwave at 1 second.

That was pretty much the best part of my day. That might sound a little depressing, but the first bit of peanut butter is fairly amazing.

Other than that my day was spent with class, physics homework, and a surprising amount of waiting on hold...oh and some scrabble. You can't forget the scrabble. Anyway, tomorrow looks to be a long but eventful day. So i'm going to go to sleep somewhat soon.

In that category of things instead of which i should be sleeping:

I'm not quite sure if the grammar works out the way i want it to in the title, but you get the gist.

My roommate is still trudging along through his homework, having slept the majority of the evening. I figured i would take the opportunity to update everyone one the events of my life, because it is oh so fascinating.

I hit a snag a couple days ago in Operation Crowded Bear, formerly called Operation something about my roommate. As it turns out, there isn't a single open room anywhere on campus. I find this somewhat impossible to believe, so i'm hoping the system is just wigging out since they just put it back on, but we'll see. I've taken some flack for trying to get rid of my roommate, and i've put quite a bit of thought into it. I don't want to live alone, and having a roommate i was friends with and could talk to would be awesome, but yeah, i dunno, between the smoking and the language barrier and the impressive propensity for getting very drunk despite not have much tolerance and suffering from impressive hangovers, i'm not sure this roommate is entirely for me. Technically his drinking is legal, but having a roommate sleeping and moaning all day is just awkward, but whatevs, we'll see how it unfolds. I could always look around for some room to switch to, but i like my room, and my suitemates for the most part, and it feels all homely now...maybe Chung will happen to find some friend he wants to move in with. I'm 3/3 so far with that happening.


Other than that life has been fairly regular. James and/or Tim popped my inner tube-sled. It was only a matter of time before that happened, so it's good that they did it, cus now they're responsible for the next sled. Tuesday i went a drew the plan for a house. That was a lot more work than i thought it was. And then my partner bailed on me for our presentation today, so i didn't really have anything, but happily i had taken a picture of it before hand, so i could at least show that i'd done it, and my professor was pretty understanding about the whole thing, at least for me, i don't think it'll go well for my partner but whatever...

I've been making good use of my camera, it's continued to be wicked snowy up here, so the picture taking possibilities have abounded. There've also been some deer that have taken up residence in Chapel Glenn and the surrounding area, and earlier today there were five of them just chilling down there but my camera chose that moment to run out of batteries. I love my camera lots and lots, but it sure could do with a battery meter, that was kinda bad planning there Canon. Due to the lack of deer, i'll provide this picture as the constellation prize. I realize that the word is conciliation, but it's one of those things that has become so deeply ingrained* in my thinking that it's very difficult not to say it or in this case type it. Like Zooology and pronounciation.



I like that picture, it makes me think of Big Fish.

well that's all from here. One of these days something of consequence will happen, but i'll be so wrapped up in my exciting life that i'll put off writing about it for weeks. Until that day comes, expect meaningless updates fairly regularly.

Oh, and mad thanks to caitlin for the wicked awesome presents i got. Now i am well equipped to start or stop small fires. Hoorah.

~Ammon

"What kind of a culture would value a twinkie."

People always think they're so clever when they pose the question, "If God foresees our actions, how can we have free will?" That question is well over 2000 years old, and, as it turns out, Boethius proposed a pretty good answer to it some 1500 years ago, which, even then, was not all that new. It's interesting how he forms his argument, since he writes it as though he is an absolute skeptic bordering blasphemy, and has 'Philosophy' rebut his argument, but he was obviously writing both. Shame he was executed for treason, he was a righteous dude, silly early Christian Empires*...

Anyway, other than reading early medieval philosophy, my day has been pretty usual. I bought all my books today, that was good, and didn't end up costing as much as i had feared. Also some of these books i can see myself giving back, since i don't think i'll have that much use for "Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy - Fifth Edition" once i'm done with this, who knows though, i like books, and the money i'd get back for them is barely worth it. I've gotten a pretty consistent gym schedule now, which is good. Working out makes me feel like i've accomplished something, even if i spend the rest of the day doing nothing of consequence. I'm pretty set in the routine of college now, and it feels good. It's been wicked cold lately, and that also feels good. I think a decade and a half in mississippi has made winter my favorite season. Go figure.

I had my first real material culture class yesterday, and that was really cool, i think i'm going to enjoy that class a lot. Just another drop in the bucket of deciding to get out of being a math major. I like math a lot, but shy of teaching, i can't see myself enjoying a math profession. People and Animals are much more interesting. So hooray for 60 credit hours and a 4 year scholarship, giving me pretty remarkable freedom. Speaking of remarkable freedom, i looked over my finances yesterday and it looks like there's a good chance that my entire second semester is payed for and i'll have money to spare. That would be glorious. I still need to find a job, but not having to worry about giving The U any more money would be pretty great.

My dad has now met Oprah. He met the president some time ago, and these aren't like how you might meet some celebrity in California, these were meetings, so huzzhah for my dad. Apparently he's in the audience for tomorrows Oprah, so i guess i'm going to watch a full episode for the first, and possibly the last, time ever.

Also, Operation New/No Roommate officially begins tomorrow. Chung's a nice enough guy, but there are a few little things that culminate in big things, amoung them smoking. I worked very hard to find three roommates that didn't smoke. They may do a lot of things of questionable legality, but none of them make my room smell bad, so yeah. Starting tomorrow we're allowed to make room changes so i'm going to go a looking for an open room. I'd prefer not to move out of my room, so we'll see. I could always just talk to Chung i suppose. Like that'll happen. If i can chase off 3 roommates without even meaning to, just think of what i could achieve when i actually put some effort into it.

Mmm, the sweet scent of my room smelling like cigarettes...yeah, something's definitely going to have to change here. At least i have the excuse of my mom not wanting me rooming with someone who smokes. She was surprisingly adamant about that.

Well that's about all that's been going on out here. Stay tuned for important announcements.

~Zak without a C

Oh, it's become almost traditional for me to have a picture somewhere in each entry, so here's one i took when it was snowing really hard between classes.



*I originally said it was the catholic church that executed him when, as it turns out, it was actually theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths who was, at the time, ruling Italy. He was an Arian (not an Aryan) Christian, which was a branch which had some conflict with the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches due to their rejection of the Trinity.

Anyway, all this is to say it was perhaps a bit foolish of me to assume that anyone executed for religious reasons was executed by the Catholic Church. I apologize to all my Catholic readers...

The weather outside is frightful...frightfully awesome!

I have an hour or so between classes and it's snowing too hard to trek back up to the dorms, so i'm holed out at the union waiting until it calms down a bit. I looked out the window after Linear Algebra and it was just completely white outside, and i'm not really dressed for blizzards today, but it seems to be slowing down a bit, so that's good. I really loved walking through heavy snow though, I was listening to Muse, which made the whole experience very intense. I think i'm going to like this semester a lot more than the last. I'm 3 more hours, but my classes are all either easier or a lot more enjoyable (not both though) so it should be a fun year. Also all my classes are together so i just hang out down on campus and then go to the gym and then i'm done, it's much nicer than three classes, each with an hour in between during which i couldn't really do anything.

As it turns out Brian Cory is also in my ward, the coincidences just keep piling up.

I bought all my books yesterday, which set me back 200 dollars. That was sad, but it had to be done, and i think i have some scholarship money that took care of it. Luckily i still have 2 classes that i don't need books for, otherwise it would have probably been 300 at least. I think college textbooks are one of the biggest scams ever, the idea that every year you need a new edition for physics is completely ridiculous, physics just doesn't change that fast. But i'm set because my teacher puts all the questions online and Cami has an older version.

I'm sort of just writing to pass the time, dang it's snowing hard again, or maybe it's just windy. It's really the wind i don't like, i can handle snow and cold, but the wind is just too much. Anyway, i think i'll go eat lunch and maybe swing over to the library to borrow Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, books i've been wanting to read lately for some reason. Oh yeah, also this semester i only have one class that assigns real homework, other than that it's just reading, research, and practice work, so there's significantly more free time, which is sweet.

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

Today i went skiing for the first time, granted it was cross country skiing, but it still counts.

It's been snowing a whole lot in Utah, and the powder was beautiful. Also it was around 4 feet deep, so that was cool.

 

I did pretty well, but whenever we found big hills we were compelled to go down them, and then i fell.

 

This is the waterfall that was our destination, it was pretty much buried in snow, but it still looked cool. I thought that it was the same hike as Cami went on, but i was incorrect.

 

This is the tunnel where waterfalls live.

 

The way back down was a lot of fun, and it felt almost like real skiing, and i only fell twice, when i couldn't turn sharply enough, which is sort of symptomatic of cross country skis. But yeah, really awesome time, and it mostly made up for how boring last night was, but whatever, i need days to hang out and do very little, otherwise i end up feeling a little over stimulated and wanting days to just sit around and do very little.

Now that the feeling has returned to my fingers and toes, i'm wondering what to do tonight. I decided that i'd rather not go to a wedding reception of someone i only sort of know, since i didn't really have anything to do at Katie's wedding reception, and that was with lots of people i knew.

When i get married, my wedding reception is going to have a moon jump. Yeah. It'll be awesome.

Oh, we saw a moose on the way down, ergo the title, but somehow it didn't get uploaded with the others. Anyway, here's the moose, and that's all from me.

~Svenge

New Shoes!

 

Handcrafted on the pacific coast. But yeah, bunches of thanks to Dylan. Compared to all the things i might have expected, shoes are far more impressive, and a lot more comfortable. Just don't step on my brown suede shoes.

Anyway, other than new shoes, today i had my three hour material culture class, which happily only went one hours sine it was the first day. It looks like it's going to be a really interesting class. After that there was a basktetball game which we definitely won. And then i came back and wii boxed with tim and chung.

A pretty good day all in all. I'm going cross country skiing on friday with Brian Cory. I've heard cross country skiing is one of the more boring things possible to do with snow, but i figure it'll be fun.

So calling past missionaries by their first names is really weird.

I signed up for institute today. It meant giving up my semester of having no classes before 10, but i think i can manage. Anwyay, what's about all for now. Tomorrow i only have two real classes, and i'm considering dropping one. I figure i should go to it at least once first.

Utah is a small world

Today i ran into Brian Cory, who was a missionary in jackson. It was a pretty hugecoincidence, although it still is dwarfed by running into our next door neighbor in utah, that was unexpected in the extreme.

Anyway, I'm back in utah, and it feels good. I like my little world that is my room, it'll be fun to have a slightly larger world someday, but it's good.

Like so.


Anyway, so the flight back was rough. I had to wake up at 4am, and then my mom drove me to new orleans. We got to the air port probably around 5:30. For it being unreasonably early, the airport was packed. The lined to security doubled back and fourth about 5 times, and about 5 minutes after i got there there was a line that stretched all the to inside the door, which was probably like 50 yards. My plane was an hour late because the crew had to sleep, which was probably good since i didn't get through security until a few minutes before my plane was supposed to leave. After about an hour the pilot and crew got there and we took off just as the sun was coming up. The flight itself was fine, we made good time and got into utah more or less as scheduled. I took the public transportation, which was actually pretty great. The bus takes you to within about 3 blocks of the trax, which is actually a lot worse than it sounds. Blocks in salt lake are an eighth of a mile, and so half a mile of dragging my 100 pounds of baggage through the mostly plowed sidewalks turned out to be fairly tiring. Once i got to the trax though it was great, the train goes about as close to the dorms as you could ask. this is where it got hard though, even though it's only a five or so minute walk, it's all up hill, and the university of utah is not as diligent in plowing the sidewalks, so the wheels weren't doing so much. This on top of 1 hour of sleep, no food in 8 hours, and a half mile of dragging my luggage about. So yeah, by the time i got up to my room i pretty much felt like dieing, but oh no. I had a class just 20 minutes away. I had to get some food first though so i was late for my first class, or rather my second class since i completely missed my first class cus i was on a plane. And then i had my third class, and then i went back to my room and unpacked and tried to catch my breath.

The rest of my day was pretty good. I met my new roommate, who is very much korean. He barely speaks english which can get a little awkward at time, but he's a really nice guy, and he has only been in the states for 2 weeks, so if his english improves linearly, he'll be proficient in no time. And if it's exponential, he'll be writing classic literature by february.

Monday night we had fhe, which was fun, and then i watched Doctor who, which freaked me out hard. Small children wearing gas masks and saying mommy...terrifying stuff.

today was nice because i feel like i'm back into the routine again. I set up my printer and the wii, put away all my clothes (yesterday they slept on the hammock) and that's pretty much where i am now, watching the new and unimproved Daily Show and Colbert Report. So chya, good stuff. I need to spend around 30 dollars at the little store at the heritage center to get rid of all my meal plan money before it disappears with my new meal plan, so yeah. Hopefully something will happen tonight other than watching tv, but i haven't watched tv in 3 weeks, so i'd live.

~The Writers Guild of Room 53107

Post Script: I changed my blog to make it a little more cheery. That dark thing was far too emo.

Leaving on a jet plane

Real quick because i need sleep. I'm supposed to wake up to fly back to utah in 2 hours, i hardly see the point in that little sleep, but at least it'll differentiate today from tomorrow, which looks to be a wicked hectic day. I fly out at 6, and classes start at 10:45.

Now that i'm actually leaving i'm kinda sad to go, more than i was the first time. But then last summer was weird, i barely saw any of my family and i was off to new and exciting things. This time i saw almost nothing but my family and i'm off to old but still relatively exciting things. Either way, saying goodbye to isaac was sad, he's by far my favorite little brother.

Today was a nice last day, i had church and then had my dad make some really good asian noodley stuff, and then we played some games and i got packed and so forth. I finished Katie's gift, and it's awesome. There are pictures, but i'm not going to upload them for a few days, thereby maintaining the surprise. Hopefully katie will post some pictures when she gets it. Now all my presents lie in the more than adequate postal abilities of my mom.

So that's all for now, i suppose i'm going to meet my new roommate today, that'll be exciting. I was pretty amped about having my own room, so i've been thinking of ways to get him to leave. He's asian, and i wonder how he would respond to me playing the typical asian music on my keyboard everytime he walks in...or just use the gong sound. I think that would actually be pretty hilarious, and if he thought it was funny, i'd know he was a keeper, and if not, then i'd have 200ish glorious square feet of room to myself...anyway, i guess i'll take what little sleep i'm offered. I've never been one to sleep on airplanes or in cars, so i'll probably take a nice nap in the afternoon tomorrow. So that's it, signing off from Mississippi.

~Sister Susie Sittin' On a Thistle
(for some reason this song is stuck in my head, which makes no sense, other than that it sort of reminds me of the Oscar Mayer Weiner song, which was stuck in my head moments ago.)

Reason #122 to care about global warming: If the polar ice caps melt, what happens to santa?

I went to the oral surgeon today and it looks like my wisdom tooth experience is winding to a close. On a whole it it's been a pretty chill process. Because they only took out one of my bottom teeth i retained the ability to chew a little, and for some reason i didn't swell up and wallow in my grogginess for days like my sisters did. My mom ascribes it to Advil, but i like to think it's some misogynistic difference between the sexes.

I found out my grades today, and i have a 3.69, which means i still have my scholarship. Woo. I fly back on monday, christmas break has gone really fast, but i'm looking forward to getting back. Life in mississippi feels weird now, it isn't wintery, and i'm not really doing anything, so it's just this surreal, in between time with lots of reading and sleeping. It's been good to be home, but yeah.

Yesterday we went to dauphin island, and i took a bunch of pictures. i also tried to build a snowman out of sand. Sand, as it turns out, is not a very good building material. By the end i had figured out a way to pretty much make it work, but also by then i had pretty much lost motivation, so it ended up a little gimpy.

Today isaac watched the last unicorn, which is probably the worst movie i've seen in my life. It's awful. It has christopher Lee, which was a little shocking, but yeah. I died a little inside. Tonight i think i'll watch doctor who. Yeah.



by the way, tonight mississippi is getting colder than it's been in 5 years. Today i wore a t-shirt.